
#REDIRECT Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. ==Letters of the alphabet== As used in modern English language, it consists of the following grapheme (see English alphabet): {| align="center" border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size:20px;" text-align:center;" |- | colspan="13" | Upper-case letters (also known as "majuscules") |- | A || B || C || D || E || F || G || H || I || J || K || L || M |- | N || O || P || Q || R || S || T || U || V || W || X || Y || Z |- | colspan="13" | Lower-case letters (also known as "minuscules") |- | a || b || c || d || e || f || g || h || i || j || k || l || m |- | n || o || p || q || r || s || t || u || v || w || x || y || z |} ===Other letters=== The ligature (typography) Æ, Œ, and the symbol ß, when used in English, French, or German, are normally not counted as separate alphabetic letters but as variants of AE, OE, and ss, respectively. Letters bearing diacritics are also not counted as separate letters in these languages. This is often not the case for Æ and Œ and some letters bearing diacritics in other variations of the Latin alphabet. For example, å, ä, and ö all count as separate letters in Swedish language. The letters Þ, Ð, Æ and Wynn are no longer a part of the Latin alphabet as used in English, but they were considered Latin letters in the past, and except for the last, are still used in Icelandic. For a short time in Roman history, the three Claudian letters were added to the alphabet, but the innovations did not stick. ==Evolution== {| align="right" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" bgcolor="#EFEFEF" style="font-size:10px; text-align:center;" | {| align="center" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" bgcolor="#EFEFEF" style="font-size:20px; text-align:center;" |- | A || B || C || D || E || F || Z |- | H || I || K || L || M || N || O |- | P || Q || R || S || T || V || X |- |} |- |Original alphabet in modern equivalents |} :''See Alphabet#History and diffusion for the history of alphabets leading up to the Roman alphabet.'' It is generally held that the Latium adopted the western variant of the Greek alphabet in the 7th century BC from Cumae, a Greeks colony in southern Italy. From the Cumae alphabet, the Old Italic alphabet was derived and the Latins finally adopted 21 of the original 26 Etruscan letters. The original Latin alphabet was: * C stood for both ''g'' and ''k''. * I stood for both ''i'' and ''j''. * V stood for both ''u'' and ''v''. Later the Z was dropped and a new letter G was placed in its position. An attempt by the emperor Claudius to introduce three Claudian letters was short-lived, but after the conquest of Greece in the 1st century BC the letters Y and Z were, respectively, adopted and readopted from the Greek alphabet and placed at the end. Now the new Latin alphabet contained 23 letters: {| |Symbol:||align=center|A||align=center|B||align=center|C||align=center|D||align=center|E||align=center|F||align=center|G||align=center|H||align=center|I||align=center|K||align=center|L||align=center|M||align=center|N||align=center|O||align=center|P||align=center|Q||align=center|R||align=center|S||align=center|T||align=center|V||align=center|X||align=center|Y||align=center|Z |- |Latin name of letter:||align=center|ā||align=center|bē||align=center|cē||align=center|dē||align=center|ē||align=center|ef||align=center|gē||align=center|hā||align=center|ī||align=center|kā||align=center|el||align=center|em||en||align=center|ō||align=center|pē||align=center|qū||align=center|er||align=center|es||align=center|tē||align=center|ū||align=center|ex||align=center|ī Graeca||align=center|zēta |- |Latin name (International Phonetic Alphabet):||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center||| |} [[Image:Duenos inscription.jpg|thumb|right|The Duenos inscription, dated to the 6th century BC, shows the earliest known forms of the Old Latin alphabet.]] The Latin names of some of the letters are disputed. In general however, the Romans did not use the traditional (Semitic-derived) names as in Greek: the names of the stop consonant letters were formed by adding to the sound (except for C, K, and Q which needed different vowels to distinguish them) and the names of the continuants consisted either of the bare sound, or the sound preceded by . The letter Y when introduced was probably called ''hy'' as in Greek (the name upsilon being not yet in use) but was changed to ''i Graeca'' ("Greek i") as the and sounds merged in Latin. Z was given its Greek name, zeta. For the Latin sounds represented by the various letters see Latin spelling and pronunciation; for the names of the letters in English see English alphabet. ===Mediaeval and later developments=== It was not until the Middle Ages that the letter J (representing non-syllabic I) and the letters U and W (to distinguish them from V) were added. The alphabet used by the Romans consisted only of capital (upper case or majuscule) letters. The lower case (minuscule) letters developed in the Middle Ages from cursive writing, first as the uncial script, and later as minuscule script. The old Roman letters were retained for formal inscriptions and for emphasis in written documents. The languages that use the Latin alphabet generally use capital letters to begin paragraphs and sentences and for proper nouns. The rules for capitalization have changed over time, and different languages vary in their rules for capitalization. Old English language, for example, used to capitalise all nouns, in the same way that Modern German language does today. == Spread of the Latin alphabet == The Latin alphabet spread from Italy, along with the Latin, to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The eastern half of the Roman Empire, including Greece, Asia Minor, the Levant, and Egypt, continued to use Greek language as a lingua franca, but Latin was widely spoken in the western half of the Empire, and as the western Romance languages, including Spanish language, French language, Catalan language, Portuguese language and Italian language, evolved out of Latin they continued to use and adapt the Latin alphabet. The Latin alphabet spread to the Germanic peoples of northern Europe with the spread of western Christianity, displacing the earlier Runic alphabets. During the Middle Ages the Latin alphabet also came into use among the western Slavic peoples, including the Poles, Czechs, Croats, Slovenes, and Slovaks, as these nations adopted Roman Catholicism; the eastern Slavs generally adopted both Orthodox Christianity and the Cyrillic alphabet. The Baltic languages Lithuanians and Latvians, as well as the non-Indo-European languages Finns, Estonians, and Magyars, also adopted the Latin alphabet. As late as 1492, the Latin alphabet was limited primarily to the nations of western and central Europe. The Orthodox Christian Slavs of eastern and southern Europe mostly used the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Greek alphabet was still in use by Greek-speakers around the eastern Mediterranean. The Arabic alphabet was widespread within Islam, both among Arabs and non-Arab nations like the Iranians, Indonesians, Malesia, Turks, people of Central-Asia and Indian subcontinent. Most of the rest of Asia used a variety of Brahmic family or the Chinese script. Over the past 500 years, the Latin alphabet has spread around the world. It spread to the Americas, Australia, and parts of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific with European colonization, along with the Spanish language, Portuguese language, English language, French language, and Dutch language languages. In the late eighteenth century, the Romanians adopted the Latin alphabet; although Romanian is a Romance language, the Romanians were predominantly Orthodox Christians, and until the nineteenth century the Church used the Cyrillic alphabet. Vietnam, under French rule, adapted the Latin alphabet for use with the Vietnamese language, which had previously used Chinese characters. The Latin alphabet is also used for many Austronesian languages, including Tagalog_language and the other languages of the Philippines, and the official Bahasa Malaysia and Indonesian languages, replacing earlier Arabic and indigenous Brahmic alphabets. In 1928, as part of Kemal Atatürk's reforms, Turkey adopted the Latin alphabet for the Turkish language, replacing the Arabic alphabet. The most of non-Slavic and non-Christian peoples of USSR such as Tatars, Bashkirs, Azeri, Kazakh, Kyrgyz etc. used Uniform Turkic alphabet in the 1930s. Later it was also adapted not only for Turkic peoples. In the 1940s all those alphabets were replaced by Cyrillic. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, several of the newly-independent Turkic languages-speaking republics adopted the Latin alphabet, replacing Cyrillic. Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenia have officially adopted the Latin alphabet for Azeri language, Uzbek language, and Turkmen language, respectively. In the 1970s, the People's Republic of China developed an official transliteration of Mandarin Chinese into the Latin alphabet, called Pinyin, although use of Chinese characters is still predominant. == Use in other languages == In the course of its history, the Latin alphabet was adapted for use for new languages, some of which had phoneme which were not used in languages previously written with this alphabet, and therefore diacritics and new letters were created as needed. ===Diacritics=== * the cedilla in ç, originally a small ''z'' written below the ''c'' (once symbolized /ts/ in Romance languages, now gives ''c'' a 'soft' sound before ''a'', ''o'', and ''u'', e.g. /s/ in French ''façade'' and in Catalan ''Barça''). * the hacek in č š ž (used in Baltic languages and Slavic languages languages to mark post-alveolar versions of the base phoneme). * the tilde in Spanish language ñ, Portuguese language ã and õ, originally a small ''n'' written above the letter (once used to mark the elision of a former ''n'', now marks nasalization of the base letter). * the acute accent in á é í ó ú in Spanish language and other languages. * the grave accent in à è ì ò ù in French language, Italian language, and other languages. * the circumflex in the vowels â ê î ô û in French language, Romanian language, and other languages, and in the consonants ĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ in Esperanto language. * the umlaut in ä ö ü in German language and other languages (changes quality of the vowel). This mark was formerly written as a small e over the affected vowel. Modern German spelling accepts ae oe and ue as variants. * the diaeresis (same visual appearance as the umlaut above) in ä ë ï ö ü in several languages (to indicate that two successive vowels do not form a diphthong). In Albanian language, ë represents a different sound from e. * the dot above in ż in Polish language and ė in Lithuanian language. * the ogonek in ą ę į ų in Polish language and Lithuanian language. * the macron in ā ē ī ō ū in Latvian language and Maori language. * the double acute accent in ő ű in Hungarian language, representing long versions of the umlauted vowels ö and ü. * the breve in ă in Romanian language, ğ in Turkish language and in ŭ in Esperanto and Belarusian Lacinka. * the comma underneath, as used in ş and ţ in Romanian language (often rendered less than optimally in fonts as a cedilla). Also used for ķ ļ ņ ŗ in Latvian language. * the dotless i (a "negative diacritic") in ı as used in Turkish language. There are other diacritics and other uses for the ones described here. Please see Alphabets derived from the Latin for a more complete list. ===New Letterforms=== W is a letter made up from two V's or U's. It was added in late Roman times to represent a Germanic languages sound. U and J were originally not distinguished from V and I respectively. In Old English, Æ æ, Eth (letter) ð and the Runic letters thorn (letter) þ, and wynn ƿ were added. Eth and thorn were replaced with 'th', and wynn with the new letter 'w'. In modern Icelandic alphabet, thorn and eth are still used. The additional letters added in German are special presentations of earlier Ligature (typography) forms (ae → ä, ue → ü or long sz → ess-tsett). French language adds the circumflex to record elision consonants that were present in earlier forms and are often still present in the modern English cognate forms (Old French ''hostel'' → French ''hôtel'' = English ''hotel'' or Late Latin ''pasta'' → Middle French ''paste'' → English ''paste''. Note Modern French divergence to ''pâte'', and preservation of the original ''pasta'' in Italian, and now borrowed into English). West Slavic languages and most South Slavic languages languages use the Latin alphabet rather than the Cyrillic alphabet, a reflection of the dominant religion practiced among those peoples. Among these, Polish language uses a variety of diacritics and digraphs to represent special phonetic values, as well as the l with stroke - ł - for a sound similar to w. Czech language uses diacritics as in Dvořák — the term hacek (caron) originates from Czech. Croatian language and the Latin version of Serbian language use carons in č, š, ž, an acute in ć and a bar (diacritic) in đ. The languages of Eastern Orthodox Slavs generally use Cyrillic instead which is much closer to the Greek alphabet. The Serbian language uses two alphabets. The African language Hausa language uses three additional consonant letters: ɓ, ɗ and ƙ, which are variants of b, d and g employed by linguists to represent certain sounds similar to them. == Collating in other languages == Alphabets derived from the Latin have varying collating rules: * In French alphabet and English alphabet, characters with diaeresis (ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ) are usually treated just like their un-accented versions. If two words differ only by an accent in French, the one with the accent is greater. (However, the Unicode 3.0 book specifies a more complex traditional French sorting rule for accented letters.) * In German alphabet letters with umlaut (Ä, Ö, Ü) are treated generally just like their non-umlauted versions; ß is always sorted as ss. This makes the alphabetic order Arg, Ärgerlich, Arm, Assistent, Aßlar, Assoziation. For phone directories and similar lists of names, the umlauts are to be collated like the letter combinations "ae", "oe", "ue". This makes the alphabetic order Udet, Übelacker, Uell, Ülle, Ueve, Üxküll, Uffenbach. * In the Swedish alphabet, "W" is seen as a variant of "V" and not a separate letter. It is however recognised and maintained in names, like in "William". The alphabet also has three extra vowels placed at its end (..., X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö). The Finnish alphabet and collating rules are used for Finnish language. * The same extra vowels as in Swedish are also present in the Danish and Norwegian alphabets but in a different order and with different glyphs (..., X, Y, Z, Æ, Ø, Å). Also, "Aa" collates as an equivalent to "Å". The Danish alphabet has traditionally seen "W" as a variant of "V", but nowadays "W" is considered a separate letter. * The Faroese alphabet also has some of these extra letters, namely Æ and Ø. Furthermore, the Faroese alphabet uses the eth, which follows the D. Five of the six vowels A, I, O, U and Y can get accents and are after that considered separate letters. The consonants C, Q, X, W and Z are not found. Therefore the first five letters are A, Á, B, D and Ð, and the last five are V, Y, Ý, Æ, Ø * Some languages have more complex rules: for example, Spanish alphabet treated (until 1997) "CH" and "LL" as single letters, giving an ordering of CINCO, CREDO, CHISPA and LOMO, LUZ, LLAMA. This is not true anymore since in 1997 Real Academia Española adopted the more conventional usage, and now LL is collated between LK and LM, and CH between CG and CI. The only Spanish specific collating question is Ñ (eñe) as a different letter collated after N. * Welsh language also has complex rules: the combinations CH, DD, FF, NG, LL, PH and TH are all considered single letters, and each is listed after the letter which is the first character in the combination, with the exception of NG which is listed after G. However, the situation is further complicated by these combinations not always being single letters. An example ordering is LAWR, LWCUS, LLONG, LLOM, LLONGYFARCH: the last of these words is a juxtaposition of LLON and GYFARCH, and, unlike LLONG, does not contain the letter NG. * In Dutch language the combination IJ (representing IJ (letter)) was formerly to be collated as Y (or sometimes, as a separate letter Y < IJ < Z), but is currently mostly collated as 2 letters (II < IJ < IK). Exceptions are phone directories; IJ is always collated as Y here because in many Dutch family names Y is used where modern spelling would require IJ. Note that a word starting with ij that is written with a capital I is also written with a capital J, e.g. the town IJmuiden (mun. Velsen) and the river IJssel. * The Hungarian language has accents, umlauts, and double accents. The accent is ignored in collating, and the double accent, which indicates a long umlaut vowel, is treated as equal to the umlaut. * In Icelandic language, Þ is added, and D is followed by Ð. ** Both letters were also used by Anglo-Saxon scribes who also used the Runic letter Wynn to represent /w/. ** thorn (letter) (called thorn; lowercase þ) is also a Runic letter. ** Eth (letter) (called eth; lowercase ð) is the letter D with an added stroke. * In Polish language, specifically Polish letters derived from the Latin alphabet are collated after their originals: A, Ą, B, C, Ć, D, E, Ę, ..., L, Ł, M, N, Ń, O, Ó, P, ..., S, Ś, T, ..., Z, Ź, Ż. * In Czech language and Slovak language, accented vowels have secondary collating weight - compared to other letters, they are treated as their unaccented forms (A-Á, E-É-Ě, I-Í, O-Ó-Ô, U-Ú-Ů, Y-Ý), but then they are sorted after the unaccented letters (e.g. the correct lexicographic order is baa, baá, báa, bab, báb, bac, bác, bač, báč). Accented consonants (the ones with hacek) have primary collating weight and are collocated immediately after their unaccented counterparts, with exception of Ď, Ň and Ť, which have again secondary weight. CH is considered to be a separate letter and goes between H and I. In Slovak, DZ and DŽ are also considered separate letters and are positioned between Ď and E (A-Á-Ä-B-C-Č-D-Ď-DZ-DŽ-E-É…). * In Esperanto, consonants with circumflex accents (c-circumflex, g-circumflex, h-circumflex, j-circumflex, s-circumflex), as well as u-breve (u with breve), are counted as separate letters and collated separately (c, ĉ, d, e, f, g, ĝ, h, ĥ, i, j, ĵ ... s, ŝ, t, u, ŭ, v, z). * In Romanian language, special characters derived from the Latin alphabet are collated after their originals: A, Ă, Â, ..., I, Î, ..., S, Ş, T, Ţ, ..., Z. * In Tatar language, there are 9 additional letters. 5 of them are vowels, paired with main alphabet vowels as hard-smooth: a-ä, o-ö, u-ü, í-i, ı-e. The four remaining are consonants: ş is sh, ç is ch, ñ is ng and ğ is gh. * In Croatian language and Serbian language and related South Slavic languages, the five accented characters and two conjoined characters are sorted after the originals: ..., C, Č, Ć, D, DŽ, Đ, E, ..., L, LJ, M, N, NJ, O, ..., S, Š, T, ..., Z, Ž. * In Filipino language and other Philippine languages, the letter Ng is treated as a separate letter. Also, letter derivatives (such as Ñ) immediately follow the base letter. Filipino language also is written with accents and other marks , but the marks are not in very wide use (except the tilde). It is pronounced as in sing, ping-pong, etc. By itself, it is pronounced nang. For multilingual situations with no one preferred language or alphabet, the Unicode Collation Algorithm can be used. == See also == * Collation * Roman square capitals * Roman cursive * Alphabets derived from the Latin * Roman letters used in mathematics == References == * Jensen, Hans. 1970. Sign Symbol and Script. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. Transl. of Die Schrift in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften. 1958, as revised by the author. * Helmut Rix. 1993. "La scrittura e la lingua" In: Mauro Cristofani (hrsg.) 1993. Gli etruschi - Una nuova immagine. Firenze: Giunti. S.199-227. * Sampson, Geoffrey. 1985. Writing systems. London (etc.): Hutchinson. * Wachter, Rudolf. 1987. Altlateinische Inschriften: sprachliche und epigraphische Untersuchungen zu den Dokumenten bis etwa 150 v.Chr. Bern (etc.): Peter Lang. *"The names of the letters of the Latin alphabet" (Appendix C) in W. Sidney Allen. ''Vox Latina — a guide to the pronunciation of classical Latin''. Cambridge University Press, 1978. ISBN 0-5221-22049-1 (Second edition) * Biktaş, Şamil, 2003, Tuğan Tel. == External links == * ''[http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/alpha/ Who runs the alphabet?]'' by Michal Zalewski * [http://diacritics.typo.cz Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents] Latin alphabet als:Lateinisches Alphabet fa:الفبای لاتین th:อักษรละติน
==Use of abbreviations== I can guess what OF, F, means, but LL ... ? Please expand the various abbreviations at least once, and better every time -- we don't have to m:Wiki is not paper. The only excuse IMHO is if it becomes a bore to read (but reformulation is probably better then). --:Robbe P.S.: Yes, I used ''IMHO'' up there. And now ''P.S.'', I'm obviously a repeat offender ... My argument is that (a) talk pages have less stringent "rules", and that (b) these abbreviations are more widely understood in this social context than F for French. :Uhhh... hello, Robbe? LL is not an abbreviation. --user:Ashibaka ::Open Webster's Dictionary and you find those abbreviations mean Old French, French and Late Latin. Relevant to etymology, but not the development of the alphabet. User:Cbdorsett 19:41, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) ==Second paragraph== I corrected a bit the second paragraph, still needs rephrasing (I found the information in a Russian Latin textbook). --User:Uriyan ==Long S== There's a mention of ſ in German, nut nothing yet about its origins. The long ſ was used in English too, & often mistaken by modern readers as an "f". ==Rename to "Latin script"?== This article should probably be rescoped to be the "Latin Script", not the "Latin Alphabet". Script is the technical / academic term for the writing system as a whole, including word formation, punctuation, and line layout. The term alphabet strictly covers only the letters in the script. Also, some scripts such as Chinese-derived scripts are not based on alphabets. This same comment applies to Greek Alphabet and other "Alphabet" articles. I don't feel ready to take the time to implement this change now, though. --user:Jdlh :This article isn't about word formation, punctuation, and line layout. It is about the Latin Alphabet, and that's why it's called "Latin alphabet". Also, "Latin alphabet" is the more commonly used name than "Latin script" by a factor of more than 3 to 1 [http://www.googlefight.com/cgi-bin/compare.pl?q1=%22Latin+Alphabet%22&q2=%22Latin+Script%22&B1=Make+a+fight%21&compare=1&langue=us]. "Script" is a technical term used to generalize all the different writing systems, but an alphabet is a kind of script, so why not be precise? If you think there are enough distinctions between "Latin script" and "Latin alphabet", why don't you create a Latin script article that contains information about the Latin script? User:Nohat 03:53, 2004 Apr 23 (UTC) * I think it is OK to have an article just on the alphabet (it is too long already as such). There is already an article on the Latin language. So the details of the script that lie between the two could go into an article Latin orthography or Latin spelling.User:Jorge Stolfi 01:35, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC) =="Latin alphabet" vs. "Collation"== Note: Wrt. collating sequences there seems to be a duplication of effort between Latin alphabet and Collation. Perhaps it would be best to move everything about also callation of latin alphabets to "Collation"? -- User:Egil 20:57 May 5, 2003 (UTC) ==AE and OE ligatures== How come there is no mention of Æ or oe in English in the article? User:Rmhermen 02:03, Nov 25, 2003 (UTC) :Or in Latin, for that matter. They were definitely used in Medieval Latin, and in some pronuciation systems they stood for distinct vowel sounds.User:Jorge Stolfi 01:35, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC) ==Very old Latin alphabet== The original latin alphabet did not have G, Y or Z either. Somebody should correct that. User:Rumpelstiltskin 20:54, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC) ==Copyvio?== It would be nice if the copyright violation thing was elaborated. Surely the whole page isn't broken? I've taken a cursory look at the external link and it didn't look like it was the source for the whole page here. --User:Shallot 21:10, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC) I've kicked out the offending history paragraphs, the rest seems unrelated to http://victorian.fortunecity.com/vangogh/555/Spell/spel-sys-mix.html. --User:Shallot 21:17, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC) :You're right, the history stuff is all that was from that page. The trick is that the copyvio is very old - the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Roman_alphabet&oldid=277362 oldest revision of the article] (before the move from Roman alphabet) is much more obviously stolen, although there is some original content; I suspect the original copyvio predates what's now in the database. So the history stuff wasn't just recently added onto an otherwise fine article, it's that the rest of the article grew up around it. I guess just kicking out the offending paragraphs is the best thing to in a case like this, but not all of the articles I listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems have been edited this much. User:DopefishJustin User talk:DopefishJustin 03:08, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC) ::The bit about Manios, which I used as an example of non-applicability of Grassmann's law, was removed, though it's not on the page the copyvio was copied from, which was obviously copied from somewhere else as shown by the stars. Can Manios be reworded and put back in? -User:PierreAbbat 00:42, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC) ::: If you can make it fit in the current article, I don't see why not. --User:Shallot ::::Maybe it would be better to put it in Latin language. Anyone know more about Old Latin? -User:PierreAbbat 01:30, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC) == Exclusive letters == What is meant by this? Is it just a sampling of other letters beyond the English 26? It's kind of odd as a subsection under the description "As used by the English language, it contains the following characters" User:Gwalla — User:Gwalla | User talk:Gwalla 04:32, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC) :Yes, its odd. But perhaps we first should get a consistent idea, what to put in which alphabet article. See Talk:Alphabet. -- User:Pjacobi 07:42, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC) ::I dislike this section as it uses examples of accents added to the 26 core letters rather than just bona fide distinct characters like the ligatures e.g. German Ezsett (which features) or the Ampersand (&) (Which is missing). Additionally I am not sure if a circumflex is ever used with a capital letter (I may be wrong about that but certainly remember something about capitals losing accents in French lessons at school!) Accents are no more than punctuation marks of a sort User:Dainamo 27 Oct 2004. ::: I'm not sure whether it's appropriate or not. Certainly, it's not exhaustive, so I'd suggest it should go, or be replaced with a link to the Categories. — User:OwenBlacker 23:47, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC) ::::In Portuguese even when printed in caps, the diacriticals are retained. Portuguese uses circumflexes over vowels. User:Nricardo 00:44, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC) By any chance should the letters on the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Uncommon_Latin_letters Uncommon Latin letters] page be added to the exclusive letters section? Just a thought. --User:Evice 05:50, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC) Wh is not a letter. It is a digraph. User:Evertype 11:08, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC) :It seemed to be considered a single letter in Maori language. I guess the situation would be similar to old Dutch IJ, and old Spanish LL, then... =S ::Maybe the info should be removed from the "Exclusive letters" section, and instead be added to the Collating section, although I am no expert on Maori Collation... == "Original" latin alphabet == I am somewhat confused by the following table, that claims to depicture an ''original'' Latin alphabet: {| align="center" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" bgcolor="#EFEFEF" style="font-size:20px; text-align:center;" |- | A || B || C || D || E || F || I || H || I || K || L |- | M || N || O || P || Q || R || S || T || V || X || |} Looking in my textbook from highschool, I would rather expect:
...but I'm sure there exist several different scholarly opinions of what a true "original" latin alphabet looked like.
--User:Johan Magnus 22:51, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
: I reckon there's no reason not to Wikipedia:be bold and replace the content with the version you've jsut put here (though wikifying the the table syntax would be nice ;o) — User:OwenBlacker 23:49, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)
::Well, my problem ''is'' that I'm not particularly knowledgable. Being bold is a good thing, but Wikipedia ''ought'' to strive for a higher degree of correctness than barely understood simplified schemes from secondary education. --User:Johan Magnus 11:36, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
==Navbox==
If anyone cares i made a new and improved latin alphabet navbox that could be used on the individual letter pages. It's adapted directly from the Cyrillic box, and i think makes things a little more open and unambiguous. Feel free to make changes, or start implementing it, if i dont get around to it first. Its at ''Template: Latin alphabet navbox''. User:Xyzzyva 19:19, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)
== Who runs the alphabet ==
I like this link. Not least because I, apparently, run the letter þ. User:Evertype 12:31, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)
: Maybe so. If someone knows an actual published reference for the idea that thorn came from the letter D, I'd bet you would be the first to provide it. :) User:Cbdorsett 20:06, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
== Good edit, Mirv ==
Nice job of cleaning out detritus. Sure, what went on in Egypt in 1800 BC is interesting to everybody, but it has nothing to do with the later adoption of the alphabet from the Etruscans. That info is already explained well somewhere else (I forget where, but it wouldn't be hard to find). User:Cbdorsett 17:45, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
== Don't Delete If You Don't Know.... Find Out First ''and Verify!'' ==
Before deleting again, read the reference. It's posted for a reason. As for hypothesis: Origins of chess, Great Pyramid of Giza reference on bottom, Moscow and Rhind Mathematical Papyri.
:The suggestion that Latin was an artificial language, devised to match a puzzle poem, is so ridiculous as to not even merit a mention, no matter what crackpot sources you provide to back it up. That Latin was a naturally evolving spoken language, with many genetic relatives (close relatives like Oscan and Umbrian and other italic languages, and much older relatives like greek, sanskrit and gothic) is extremely well attested. Or are you going to suggest that proto-indoeuropean was an artificial language, devised before the invention of writing to allow one of its descendents to match some puzzle ten thousand years later? User:Mirv did well to delete that. -User:Lethe | User talk:Lethe 23:05, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
::Seems to me that if some revision called Latin "artificial" (a revision that for some reason I cannot find), the editor was thinking that at some point in time, Latin was not used daily as an oral language, but only in scholarly works. "Artificial", when used to refer to languages, refers to what we now call conlangs, that is, languages that were deliberately constructed. Regardless, all that information belongs somewhere else, not in a barebones description of the alphabet itself. User:Cbdorsett 19:38, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
:::[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Latin_alphabet&oldid=9954711 This] version contains this quote (due to User:Roylee):
:::::"There is also evidence that the Latin language itself was not a haphazard product of spoken usage but actually purposefully contrived: The most plausible explanation for the sator square's existence is that the Latin language was originally built around it rather than vice versa. (See Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas.)"
:::You can imagine someone arguing that literary Latin was different from the spoken language. That's a well-known fact. But this quote claims that "the Latin language [..] was [..] contrived" to explain some square. Patent nonsense. User:Lethe | User talk:Lethe 20:20, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
== "for" vs. "from" ==
Explanation for why I reverted [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Latin_alphabet&diff=12219041&oldid=12148028 this edit]: Alphabet, [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alphabet&oldid=12219074#History_and_diffusion at the time], said "the alphabets of Europe, including the Roman alphabet and its descendants and the Cyrillic alphabet, developed for the eastern Slavic languages, and the runic alphabets are all themselves ultimately descended from the Greek alphabet." (emphasis is mine.) It was not entirely clear that "developed for the eastern Slavic languages" applied only to the Cyrillic alphabet, which explains the following gross misunderstanding that was inserted into this article:
:the alphabets of Europe, including the Latin alphabet and its descendants, as well as the Cyrillic alphabet, all developed from the eastern Slavic languages.
As far as I know nobody thinks the Latin alphabet developed from an eastern Slavic language, but if there are theories to that effect a reference should be easy to find. —User:MirvUser talk:MirvSpecial:Emailuser/Mirv 19:56, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
== One Contradictory Reference: ==
Interesting article ... ''18 pages long!'' But you must sign up as a member to read it. Sorry.
:''page 13: [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=53649 2005 Encyclopædia Britannica]''
::Two early Slavic alphabets, the'' Cyrillic ''and the Glagolitic, were invented [''circa AD 850''] by ... Greeks ... who became apostles to the southern Slavs, whom they converted to Christianity. [''So, technically, the Cyrillic is of Slavic origin, but invented by Greeks who were living there.'']
:''page 15:'' [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=53651]
::An opinion that used to be commonly held, and still is held by many, is that the Latin alphabet was derived directly from the Greek in a form used by Greek colonists in Italy. The theory rested on an assertion that the Latin alphabet corresponds to the Chalcidian variety of the western group of Greek scripts employed at Cumae in Campania, southern Italy.''' ''This theory is unlikely;'' indeed, as already mentioned, ''the Etruscan alphabet was the link between the Greek and the Latin.'' '''For instance, the most interesting feature in the inscription of the Praeneste Fibula is the device of combining the letters ''f'' and ''h'' to represent the Latin sound of ''f.'' This was one of the Etruscan ways of representing the same sound. Also, most of the Latin letter names, such as ''a, be, ce, de'' for the Greek ''alpha, beta, gamma, delta,'' and so on, were taken over from the Etruscans.
::''' ''Indeed, for the first six centuries of its existence, Roman writing was relatively unimpressive.'' Only with the advent of the 1st century BC were there signs of magnificence to come:
:::: ''The adaptation of the Etruscan alphabet to the Latin language probably took place some time in the 7th century BC.'' '''From this century there is a gold brooch [''bearing an''] inscription, written in an early form of Latin, run[ning] ''from right to left.''
::::Dating from the end of the 7th or the beginning of the 6th century BC [''are''] inscription[''s''] ... also written from ''right to left.'' Some Sabine inscriptions belong to the 5th or the 4th century BC. There are also a few inscriptions belonging to the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.
''Did ya'll know that our Roman ancestors originally read from right to left? Why?'' Maybe because they saw the sun as rising to the right and setting to the left? Maybe because ancient Egyptians perceived the "southern" (i.e., the "African") hemisphere as the "top of the world?" '''Remember: ''Lower'' Egypt is ''to the north of Upper'' Egypt!''' Maybe it was the ancient Egyptians who originally taught the ancient Romans how to read and write??? Speculation.
:''page 17:'' [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=53653]
::At a later stage, after 250 BC, the seventh letter, the Greek ''zeta,'' was dropped because Latin did not require it, and a new letter, ''G, made by adding a bar to the lower end of C,'' was placed in its position.... After the conquest of Greece in the 1st century BC, [''the Romans borrowed''] a large number of Greek ''words....'' ''Y and Z were adopted ... but only [so the Romans could] transliterate [the otherwise incomprehensible] Greek words; ''hence, they do not appear in normal Latin inscriptions.
:As for the''' ''runes'': '''[http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=53652 ''page 16'']
::The origin of the runes offers many difficult problems and has been hotly argued by scholars and others. Some scholars propounded the 6th century BC Greek alphabet [''or late BC Greek cursive''] as the prototype of the runes, [''and others''] proposed the Latin alphabet as the source....''' ''The most probable theory, supported recently by many scholars, is that the runic script derived from a North Etruscan, Alpine alphabet.'' '''In that case, it is very probable that it originated about the 2nd century BC or a little later.... The gradual displacement of the runes coincided with the increasing influence of the Roman Catholic Church.
''Happy Reading!!'' -- User: Roylee
{| class="toccolours" style="margin: 0 auto; width: 80%;text-align: center;" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" ! style="background: #e0e0e0;text-align:right;" | Latin alphabet: | | Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd | Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii | Jj | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp | Qq | Rr | Ss | Tt | Uu | Vv | Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz |- ! style="background: #e0e0e0;text-align:right;" | Diacritic: | style="font-family:; font-family /**/:inherit;" | À | Á | Â | Ä | Å | A-macron | A-ogonek | Ç | C-circumflex | C-caron | C-acute | D with stroke | E-ogonek | Ë | G-circumflex | G-breve | H-circumflex | I-ogonek | Ï | Dotless I | J-circumflex | L with stroke | Ñ | Õ | Ö | O-double acute | Ø | O-ogonek | S-cedilla | S-comma | S-caron | S-circumflex | T-comma | U-breve | Ü | U-ogonek | U-krouzek | U-double acute | Z-caron |- ! style="background: #e0e0e0;text-align:right;" | :Category:Uncommon Latin letters: | style="font-family:; font-family /**/:inherit;" | Æ | Ð | DZ (letter) | DŽ | Schwa | Yogh | Hwair | Kra (letter) | LJ (letter) | Ll | NJ (letter) | Eng | OE ligature | Ou (letter) | Half r | Long s | ß | Þ | Wynn | IJ (letter) |}
All 26 standard letters of the Latin alphabet, plus all extended Latin grapheme considered as distinct letters in languages that use the Latin alphabet. Alphabetic writing systems
This category needs un-børking. If anyone has Wikipedia un-børking powers, could they please apply the automatic un-børkulator to this category. —User:Ashley Y 05:00, 2005 Jan 8 (UTC) What is the difference between :Category:Latin alphabet and :Category:Latin letters ? --User:Sl 07:33, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
A note on the fonts used in this template: the extended range and uncommon letters section call the template Template:Unicode_fonts for font family, to ensure proper displayal of the characters on user agents which cannot handle Unicode properly (i.e. Internet Explorer). The font family is followed by a trick which allows better browsers like Opera (browser) and Mozilla Firefox to do their own font matching. See Template_talk:Unicode for more info. 08:56, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC) == IPA letters == I have removed the recently added IPA letters from the template. The IPA alphabet is not an extended Latin alphabet, but a different alphabet which happens to be made up out of letters originating from the Latin. This template should only list letters which are actually used in the standard ortography of languages, for those languages which use an extended Latin alphabet, and letters which historically formed a part of (a version of) the alphabet. Thus yogh is in (used in Middle English and Middle Scots), but Ezh is out (used only for IPA). 00:22, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
Words begining with Latin_alphabet:
Latin_Alphabet
Latin_alphabet
Latin_alphabet
Latin_alphabet
Latin_alphabet
Latin_alphabet
Latin_alphabet
Latin_alphabet_navbox
Latin_alphabet_navbox
Latin Alphabet
#REDIRECT Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. ==Letters of the alphabet== As used in modern English language, it consists of the following grapheme (see English alphabet): {| align="center" border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size:20px;" text-align:center;" |- | colspan="13" | Upper-case letters (also known as "majuscules") |- | A || B || C || D || E || F || G || H || I || J || K || L || M |- | N || O || P || Q || R || S || T || U || V || W || X || Y || Z |- | colspan="13" | Lower-case letters (also known as "minuscules") |- | a || b || c || d || e || f || g || h || i || j || k || l || m |- | n || o || p || q || r || s || t || u || v || w || x || y || z |} ===Other letters=== The ligature (typography) Æ, Œ, and the symbol ß, when used in English, French, or German, are normally not counted as separate alphabetic letters but as variants of AE, OE, and ss, respectively. Letters bearing diacritics are also not counted as separate letters in these languages. This is often not the case for Æ and Œ and some letters bearing diacritics in other variations of the Latin alphabet. For example, å, ä, and ö all count as separate letters in Swedish language. The letters Þ, Ð, Æ and Wynn are no longer a part of the Latin alphabet as used in English, but they were considered Latin letters in the past, and except for the last, are still used in Icelandic. For a short time in Roman history, the three Claudian letters were added to the alphabet, but the innovations did not stick. ==Evolution== {| align="right" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" bgcolor="#EFEFEF" style="font-size:10px; text-align:center;" | {| align="center" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" bgcolor="#EFEFEF" style="font-size:20px; text-align:center;" |- | A || B || C || D || E || F || Z |- | H || I || K || L || M || N || O |- | P || Q || R || S || T || V || X |- |} |- |Original alphabet in modern equivalents |} :''See Alphabet#History and diffusion for the history of alphabets leading up to the Roman alphabet.'' It is generally held that the Latium adopted the western variant of the Greek alphabet in the 7th century BC from Cumae, a Greeks colony in southern Italy. From the Cumae alphabet, the Old Italic alphabet was derived and the Latins finally adopted 21 of the original 26 Etruscan letters. The original Latin alphabet was: * C stood for both ''g'' and ''k''. * I stood for both ''i'' and ''j''. * V stood for both ''u'' and ''v''. Later the Z was dropped and a new letter G was placed in its position. An attempt by the emperor Claudius to introduce three Claudian letters was short-lived, but after the conquest of Greece in the 1st century BC the letters Y and Z were, respectively, adopted and readopted from the Greek alphabet and placed at the end. Now the new Latin alphabet contained 23 letters: {| |Symbol:||align=center|A||align=center|B||align=center|C||align=center|D||align=center|E||align=center|F||align=center|G||align=center|H||align=center|I||align=center|K||align=center|L||align=center|M||align=center|N||align=center|O||align=center|P||align=center|Q||align=center|R||align=center|S||align=center|T||align=center|V||align=center|X||align=center|Y||align=center|Z |- |Latin name of letter:||align=center|ā||align=center|bē||align=center|cē||align=center|dē||align=center|ē||align=center|ef||align=center|gē||align=center|hā||align=center|ī||align=center|kā||align=center|el||align=center|em||en||align=center|ō||align=center|pē||align=center|qū||align=center|er||align=center|es||align=center|tē||align=center|ū||align=center|ex||align=center|ī Graeca||align=center|zēta |- |Latin name (International Phonetic Alphabet):||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center|||align=center||| |} [[Image:Duenos inscription.jpg|thumb|right|The Duenos inscription, dated to the 6th century BC, shows the earliest known forms of the Old Latin alphabet.]] The Latin names of some of the letters are disputed. In general however, the Romans did not use the traditional (Semitic-derived) names as in Greek: the names of the stop consonant letters were formed by adding to the sound (except for C, K, and Q which needed different vowels to distinguish them) and the names of the continuants consisted either of the bare sound, or the sound preceded by . The letter Y when introduced was probably called ''hy'' as in Greek (the name upsilon being not yet in use) but was changed to ''i Graeca'' ("Greek i") as the and sounds merged in Latin. Z was given its Greek name, zeta. For the Latin sounds represented by the various letters see Latin spelling and pronunciation; for the names of the letters in English see English alphabet. ===Mediaeval and later developments=== It was not until the Middle Ages that the letter J (representing non-syllabic I) and the letters U and W (to distinguish them from V) were added. The alphabet used by the Romans consisted only of capital (upper case or majuscule) letters. The lower case (minuscule) letters developed in the Middle Ages from cursive writing, first as the uncial script, and later as minuscule script. The old Roman letters were retained for formal inscriptions and for emphasis in written documents. The languages that use the Latin alphabet generally use capital letters to begin paragraphs and sentences and for proper nouns. The rules for capitalization have changed over time, and different languages vary in their rules for capitalization. Old English language, for example, used to capitalise all nouns, in the same way that Modern German language does today. == Spread of the Latin alphabet == The Latin alphabet spread from Italy, along with the Latin, to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The eastern half of the Roman Empire, including Greece, Asia Minor, the Levant, and Egypt, continued to use Greek language as a lingua franca, but Latin was widely spoken in the western half of the Empire, and as the western Romance languages, including Spanish language, French language, Catalan language, Portuguese language and Italian language, evolved out of Latin they continued to use and adapt the Latin alphabet. The Latin alphabet spread to the Germanic peoples of northern Europe with the spread of western Christianity, displacing the earlier Runic alphabets. During the Middle Ages the Latin alphabet also came into use among the western Slavic peoples, including the Poles, Czechs, Croats, Slovenes, and Slovaks, as these nations adopted Roman Catholicism; the eastern Slavs generally adopted both Orthodox Christianity and the Cyrillic alphabet. The Baltic languages Lithuanians and Latvians, as well as the non-Indo-European languages Finns, Estonians, and Magyars, also adopted the Latin alphabet. As late as 1492, the Latin alphabet was limited primarily to the nations of western and central Europe. The Orthodox Christian Slavs of eastern and southern Europe mostly used the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Greek alphabet was still in use by Greek-speakers around the eastern Mediterranean. The Arabic alphabet was widespread within Islam, both among Arabs and non-Arab nations like the Iranians, Indonesians, Malesia, Turks, people of Central-Asia and Indian subcontinent. Most of the rest of Asia used a variety of Brahmic family or the Chinese script. Over the past 500 years, the Latin alphabet has spread around the world. It spread to the Americas, Australia, and parts of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific with European colonization, along with the Spanish language, Portuguese language, English language, French language, and Dutch language languages. In the late eighteenth century, the Romanians adopted the Latin alphabet; although Romanian is a Romance language, the Romanians were predominantly Orthodox Christians, and until the nineteenth century the Church used the Cyrillic alphabet. Vietnam, under French rule, adapted the Latin alphabet for use with the Vietnamese language, which had previously used Chinese characters. The Latin alphabet is also used for many Austronesian languages, including Tagalog_language and the other languages of the Philippines, and the official Bahasa Malaysia and Indonesian languages, replacing earlier Arabic and indigenous Brahmic alphabets. In 1928, as part of Kemal Atatürk's reforms, Turkey adopted the Latin alphabet for the Turkish language, replacing the Arabic alphabet. The most of non-Slavic and non-Christian peoples of USSR such as Tatars, Bashkirs, Azeri, Kazakh, Kyrgyz etc. used Uniform Turkic alphabet in the 1930s. Later it was also adapted not only for Turkic peoples. In the 1940s all those alphabets were replaced by Cyrillic. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, several of the newly-independent Turkic languages-speaking republics adopted the Latin alphabet, replacing Cyrillic. Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenia have officially adopted the Latin alphabet for Azeri language, Uzbek language, and Turkmen language, respectively. In the 1970s, the People's Republic of China developed an official transliteration of Mandarin Chinese into the Latin alphabet, called Pinyin, although use of Chinese characters is still predominant. == Use in other languages == In the course of its history, the Latin alphabet was adapted for use for new languages, some of which had phoneme which were not used in languages previously written with this alphabet, and therefore diacritics and new letters were created as needed. ===Diacritics=== * the cedilla in ç, originally a small ''z'' written below the ''c'' (once symbolized /ts/ in Romance languages, now gives ''c'' a 'soft' sound before ''a'', ''o'', and ''u'', e.g. /s/ in French ''façade'' and in Catalan ''Barça''). * the hacek in č š ž (used in Baltic languages and Slavic languages languages to mark post-alveolar versions of the base phoneme). * the tilde in Spanish language ñ, Portuguese language ã and õ, originally a small ''n'' written above the letter (once used to mark the elision of a former ''n'', now marks nasalization of the base letter). * the acute accent in á é í ó ú in Spanish language and other languages. * the grave accent in à è ì ò ù in French language, Italian language, and other languages. * the circumflex in the vowels â ê î ô û in French language, Romanian language, and other languages, and in the consonants ĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ in Esperanto language. * the umlaut in ä ö ü in German language and other languages (changes quality of the vowel). This mark was formerly written as a small e over the affected vowel. Modern German spelling accepts ae oe and ue as variants. * the diaeresis (same visual appearance as the umlaut above) in ä ë ï ö ü in several languages (to indicate that two successive vowels do not form a diphthong). In Albanian language, ë represents a different sound from e. * the dot above in ż in Polish language and ė in Lithuanian language. * the ogonek in ą ę į ų in Polish language and Lithuanian language. * the macron in ā ē ī ō ū in Latvian language and Maori language. * the double acute accent in ő ű in Hungarian language, representing long versions of the umlauted vowels ö and ü. * the breve in ă in Romanian language, ğ in Turkish language and in ŭ in Esperanto and Belarusian Lacinka. * the comma underneath, as used in ş and ţ in Romanian language (often rendered less than optimally in fonts as a cedilla). Also used for ķ ļ ņ ŗ in Latvian language. * the dotless i (a "negative diacritic") in ı as used in Turkish language. There are other diacritics and other uses for the ones described here. Please see Alphabets derived from the Latin for a more complete list. ===New Letterforms=== W is a letter made up from two V's or U's. It was added in late Roman times to represent a Germanic languages sound. U and J were originally not distinguished from V and I respectively. In Old English, Æ æ, Eth (letter) ð and the Runic letters thorn (letter) þ, and wynn ƿ were added. Eth and thorn were replaced with 'th', and wynn with the new letter 'w'. In modern Icelandic alphabet, thorn and eth are still used. The additional letters added in German are special presentations of earlier Ligature (typography) forms (ae → ä, ue → ü or long sz → ess-tsett). French language adds the circumflex to record elision consonants that were present in earlier forms and are often still present in the modern English cognate forms (Old French ''hostel'' → French ''hôtel'' = English ''hotel'' or Late Latin ''pasta'' → Middle French ''paste'' → English ''paste''. Note Modern French divergence to ''pâte'', and preservation of the original ''pasta'' in Italian, and now borrowed into English). West Slavic languages and most South Slavic languages languages use the Latin alphabet rather than the Cyrillic alphabet, a reflection of the dominant religion practiced among those peoples. Among these, Polish language uses a variety of diacritics and digraphs to represent special phonetic values, as well as the l with stroke - ł - for a sound similar to w. Czech language uses diacritics as in Dvořák — the term hacek (caron) originates from Czech. Croatian language and the Latin version of Serbian language use carons in č, š, ž, an acute in ć and a bar (diacritic) in đ. The languages of Eastern Orthodox Slavs generally use Cyrillic instead which is much closer to the Greek alphabet. The Serbian language uses two alphabets. The African language Hausa language uses three additional consonant letters: ɓ, ɗ and ƙ, which are variants of b, d and g employed by linguists to represent certain sounds similar to them. == Collating in other languages == Alphabets derived from the Latin have varying collating rules: * In French alphabet and English alphabet, characters with diaeresis (ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ) are usually treated just like their un-accented versions. If two words differ only by an accent in French, the one with the accent is greater. (However, the Unicode 3.0 book specifies a more complex traditional French sorting rule for accented letters.) * In German alphabet letters with umlaut (Ä, Ö, Ü) are treated generally just like their non-umlauted versions; ß is always sorted as ss. This makes the alphabetic order Arg, Ärgerlich, Arm, Assistent, Aßlar, Assoziation. For phone directories and similar lists of names, the umlauts are to be collated like the letter combinations "ae", "oe", "ue". This makes the alphabetic order Udet, Übelacker, Uell, Ülle, Ueve, Üxküll, Uffenbach. * In the Swedish alphabet, "W" is seen as a variant of "V" and not a separate letter. It is however recognised and maintained in names, like in "William". The alphabet also has three extra vowels placed at its end (..., X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö). The Finnish alphabet and collating rules are used for Finnish language. * The same extra vowels as in Swedish are also present in the Danish and Norwegian alphabets but in a different order and with different glyphs (..., X, Y, Z, Æ, Ø, Å). Also, "Aa" collates as an equivalent to "Å". The Danish alphabet has traditionally seen "W" as a variant of "V", but nowadays "W" is considered a separate letter. * The Faroese alphabet also has some of these extra letters, namely Æ and Ø. Furthermore, the Faroese alphabet uses the eth, which follows the D. Five of the six vowels A, I, O, U and Y can get accents and are after that considered separate letters. The consonants C, Q, X, W and Z are not found. Therefore the first five letters are A, Á, B, D and Ð, and the last five are V, Y, Ý, Æ, Ø * Some languages have more complex rules: for example, Spanish alphabet treated (until 1997) "CH" and "LL" as single letters, giving an ordering of CINCO, CREDO, CHISPA and LOMO, LUZ, LLAMA. This is not true anymore since in 1997 Real Academia Española adopted the more conventional usage, and now LL is collated between LK and LM, and CH between CG and CI. The only Spanish specific collating question is Ñ (eñe) as a different letter collated after N. * Welsh language also has complex rules: the combinations CH, DD, FF, NG, LL, PH and TH are all considered single letters, and each is listed after the letter which is the first character in the combination, with the exception of NG which is listed after G. However, the situation is further complicated by these combinations not always being single letters. An example ordering is LAWR, LWCUS, LLONG, LLOM, LLONGYFARCH: the last of these words is a juxtaposition of LLON and GYFARCH, and, unlike LLONG, does not contain the letter NG. * In Dutch language the combination IJ (representing IJ (letter)) was formerly to be collated as Y (or sometimes, as a separate letter Y < IJ < Z), but is currently mostly collated as 2 letters (II < IJ < IK). Exceptions are phone directories; IJ is always collated as Y here because in many Dutch family names Y is used where modern spelling would require IJ. Note that a word starting with ij that is written with a capital I is also written with a capital J, e.g. the town IJmuiden (mun. Velsen) and the river IJssel. * The Hungarian language has accents, umlauts, and double accents. The accent is ignored in collating, and the double accent, which indicates a long umlaut vowel, is treated as equal to the umlaut. * In Icelandic language, Þ is added, and D is followed by Ð. ** Both letters were also used by Anglo-Saxon scribes who also used the Runic letter Wynn to represent /w/. ** thorn (letter) (called thorn; lowercase þ) is also a Runic letter. ** Eth (letter) (called eth; lowercase ð) is the letter D with an added stroke. * In Polish language, specifically Polish letters derived from the Latin alphabet are collated after their originals: A, Ą, B, C, Ć, D, E, Ę, ..., L, Ł, M, N, Ń, O, Ó, P, ..., S, Ś, T, ..., Z, Ź, Ż. * In Czech language and Slovak language, accented vowels have secondary collating weight - compared to other letters, they are treated as their unaccented forms (A-Á, E-É-Ě, I-Í, O-Ó-Ô, U-Ú-Ů, Y-Ý), but then they are sorted after the unaccented letters (e.g. the correct lexicographic order is baa, baá, báa, bab, báb, bac, bác, bač, báč). Accented consonants (the ones with hacek) have primary collating weight and are collocated immediately after their unaccented counterparts, with exception of Ď, Ň and Ť, which have again secondary weight. CH is considered to be a separate letter and goes between H and I. In Slovak, DZ and DŽ are also considered separate letters and are positioned between Ď and E (A-Á-Ä-B-C-Č-D-Ď-DZ-DŽ-E-É…). * In Esperanto, consonants with circumflex accents (c-circumflex, g-circumflex, h-circumflex, j-circumflex, s-circumflex), as well as u-breve (u with breve), are counted as separate letters and collated separately (c, ĉ, d, e, f, g, ĝ, h, ĥ, i, j, ĵ ... s, ŝ, t, u, ŭ, v, z). * In Romanian language, special characters derived from the Latin alphabet are collated after their originals: A, Ă, Â, ..., I, Î, ..., S, Ş, T, Ţ, ..., Z. * In Tatar language, there are 9 additional letters. 5 of them are vowels, paired with main alphabet vowels as hard-smooth: a-ä, o-ö, u-ü, í-i, ı-e. The four remaining are consonants: ş is sh, ç is ch, ñ is ng and ğ is gh. * In Croatian language and Serbian language and related South Slavic languages, the five accented characters and two conjoined characters are sorted after the originals: ..., C, Č, Ć, D, DŽ, Đ, E, ..., L, LJ, M, N, NJ, O, ..., S, Š, T, ..., Z, Ž. * In Filipino language and other Philippine languages, the letter Ng is treated as a separate letter. Also, letter derivatives (such as Ñ) immediately follow the base letter. Filipino language also is written with accents and other marks , but the marks are not in very wide use (except the tilde). It is pronounced as in sing, ping-pong, etc. By itself, it is pronounced nang. For multilingual situations with no one preferred language or alphabet, the Unicode Collation Algorithm can be used. == See also == * Collation * Roman square capitals * Roman cursive * Alphabets derived from the Latin * Roman letters used in mathematics == References == * Jensen, Hans. 1970. Sign Symbol and Script. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. Transl. of Die Schrift in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften. 1958, as revised by the author. * Helmut Rix. 1993. "La scrittura e la lingua" In: Mauro Cristofani (hrsg.) 1993. Gli etruschi - Una nuova immagine. Firenze: Giunti. S.199-227. * Sampson, Geoffrey. 1985. Writing systems. London (etc.): Hutchinson. * Wachter, Rudolf. 1987. Altlateinische Inschriften: sprachliche und epigraphische Untersuchungen zu den Dokumenten bis etwa 150 v.Chr. Bern (etc.): Peter Lang. *"The names of the letters of the Latin alphabet" (Appendix C) in W. Sidney Allen. ''Vox Latina — a guide to the pronunciation of classical Latin''. Cambridge University Press, 1978. ISBN 0-5221-22049-1 (Second edition) * Biktaş, Şamil, 2003, Tuğan Tel. == External links == * ''[http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/alpha/ Who runs the alphabet?]'' by Michal Zalewski * [http://diacritics.typo.cz Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents] Latin alphabet als:Lateinisches Alphabet fa:الفبای لاتین th:อักษรละติน
Latin alphabet
==Use of abbreviations== I can guess what OF, F, means, but LL ... ? Please expand the various abbreviations at least once, and better every time -- we don't have to m:Wiki is not paper. The only excuse IMHO is if it becomes a bore to read (but reformulation is probably better then). --:Robbe P.S.: Yes, I used ''IMHO'' up there. And now ''P.S.'', I'm obviously a repeat offender ... My argument is that (a) talk pages have less stringent "rules", and that (b) these abbreviations are more widely understood in this social context than F for French. :Uhhh... hello, Robbe? LL is not an abbreviation. --user:Ashibaka ::Open Webster's Dictionary and you find those abbreviations mean Old French, French and Late Latin. Relevant to etymology, but not the development of the alphabet. User:Cbdorsett 19:41, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) ==Second paragraph== I corrected a bit the second paragraph, still needs rephrasing (I found the information in a Russian Latin textbook). --User:Uriyan ==Long S== There's a mention of ſ in German, nut nothing yet about its origins. The long ſ was used in English too, & often mistaken by modern readers as an "f". ==Rename to "Latin script"?== This article should probably be rescoped to be the "Latin Script", not the "Latin Alphabet". Script is the technical / academic term for the writing system as a whole, including word formation, punctuation, and line layout. The term alphabet strictly covers only the letters in the script. Also, some scripts such as Chinese-derived scripts are not based on alphabets. This same comment applies to Greek Alphabet and other "Alphabet" articles. I don't feel ready to take the time to implement this change now, though. --user:Jdlh :This article isn't about word formation, punctuation, and line layout. It is about the Latin Alphabet, and that's why it's called "Latin alphabet". Also, "Latin alphabet" is the more commonly used name than "Latin script" by a factor of more than 3 to 1 [http://www.googlefight.com/cgi-bin/compare.pl?q1=%22Latin+Alphabet%22&q2=%22Latin+Script%22&B1=Make+a+fight%21&compare=1&langue=us]. "Script" is a technical term used to generalize all the different writing systems, but an alphabet is a kind of script, so why not be precise? If you think there are enough distinctions between "Latin script" and "Latin alphabet", why don't you create a Latin script article that contains information about the Latin script? User:Nohat 03:53, 2004 Apr 23 (UTC) * I think it is OK to have an article just on the alphabet (it is too long already as such). There is already an article on the Latin language. So the details of the script that lie between the two could go into an article Latin orthography or Latin spelling.User:Jorge Stolfi 01:35, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC) =="Latin alphabet" vs. "Collation"== Note: Wrt. collating sequences there seems to be a duplication of effort between Latin alphabet and Collation. Perhaps it would be best to move everything about also callation of latin alphabets to "Collation"? -- User:Egil 20:57 May 5, 2003 (UTC) ==AE and OE ligatures== How come there is no mention of Æ or oe in English in the article? User:Rmhermen 02:03, Nov 25, 2003 (UTC) :Or in Latin, for that matter. They were definitely used in Medieval Latin, and in some pronuciation systems they stood for distinct vowel sounds.User:Jorge Stolfi 01:35, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC) ==Very old Latin alphabet== The original latin alphabet did not have G, Y or Z either. Somebody should correct that. User:Rumpelstiltskin 20:54, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC) ==Copyvio?== It would be nice if the copyright violation thing was elaborated. Surely the whole page isn't broken? I've taken a cursory look at the external link and it didn't look like it was the source for the whole page here. --User:Shallot 21:10, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC) I've kicked out the offending history paragraphs, the rest seems unrelated to http://victorian.fortunecity.com/vangogh/555/Spell/spel-sys-mix.html. --User:Shallot 21:17, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC) :You're right, the history stuff is all that was from that page. The trick is that the copyvio is very old - the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Roman_alphabet&oldid=277362 oldest revision of the article] (before the move from Roman alphabet) is much more obviously stolen, although there is some original content; I suspect the original copyvio predates what's now in the database. So the history stuff wasn't just recently added onto an otherwise fine article, it's that the rest of the article grew up around it. I guess just kicking out the offending paragraphs is the best thing to in a case like this, but not all of the articles I listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems have been edited this much. User:DopefishJustin User talk:DopefishJustin 03:08, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC) ::The bit about Manios, which I used as an example of non-applicability of Grassmann's law, was removed, though it's not on the page the copyvio was copied from, which was obviously copied from somewhere else as shown by the stars. Can Manios be reworded and put back in? -User:PierreAbbat 00:42, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC) ::: If you can make it fit in the current article, I don't see why not. --User:Shallot ::::Maybe it would be better to put it in Latin language. Anyone know more about Old Latin? -User:PierreAbbat 01:30, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC) == Exclusive letters == What is meant by this? Is it just a sampling of other letters beyond the English 26? It's kind of odd as a subsection under the description "As used by the English language, it contains the following characters" User:Gwalla — User:Gwalla | User talk:Gwalla 04:32, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC) :Yes, its odd. But perhaps we first should get a consistent idea, what to put in which alphabet article. See Talk:Alphabet. -- User:Pjacobi 07:42, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC) ::I dislike this section as it uses examples of accents added to the 26 core letters rather than just bona fide distinct characters like the ligatures e.g. German Ezsett (which features) or the Ampersand (&) (Which is missing). Additionally I am not sure if a circumflex is ever used with a capital letter (I may be wrong about that but certainly remember something about capitals losing accents in French lessons at school!) Accents are no more than punctuation marks of a sort User:Dainamo 27 Oct 2004. ::: I'm not sure whether it's appropriate or not. Certainly, it's not exhaustive, so I'd suggest it should go, or be replaced with a link to the Categories. — User:OwenBlacker 23:47, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC) ::::In Portuguese even when printed in caps, the diacriticals are retained. Portuguese uses circumflexes over vowels. User:Nricardo 00:44, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC) By any chance should the letters on the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Uncommon_Latin_letters Uncommon Latin letters] page be added to the exclusive letters section? Just a thought. --User:Evice 05:50, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC) Wh is not a letter. It is a digraph. User:Evertype 11:08, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC) :It seemed to be considered a single letter in Maori language. I guess the situation would be similar to old Dutch IJ, and old Spanish LL, then... =S ::Maybe the info should be removed from the "Exclusive letters" section, and instead be added to the Collating section, although I am no expert on Maori Collation... == "Original" latin alphabet == I am somewhat confused by the following table, that claims to depicture an ''original'' Latin alphabet: {| align="center" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8" bgcolor="#EFEFEF" style="font-size:20px; text-align:center;" |- | A || B || C || D || E || F || I || H || I || K || L |- | M || N || O || P || Q || R || S || T || V || X || |} Looking in my textbook from highschool, I would rather expect:
8th century B.C. — adapted from the Etruscan alphabet: | |||||||||
| A | B | C (G) | D | E | F | Z | H | I | |
| K | L | M | N | O | P (P) | Q | R (R) | ||
| S | T | V | X | ||||||
1st century B.C. — after the conquest of Greece: | |||||||||
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | |
| K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | ||
| S | T | V | X | Y | Z | ||||
Latin alphabet
{| class="toccolours" style="margin: 0 auto; width: 80%;text-align: center;" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" ! style="background: #e0e0e0;text-align:right;" | Latin alphabet: | | Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd | Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii | Jj | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp | Qq | Rr | Ss | Tt | Uu | Vv | Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz |- ! style="background: #e0e0e0;text-align:right;" | Diacritic: | style="font-family:; font-family /**/:inherit;" | À | Á | Â | Ä | Å | A-macron | A-ogonek | Ç | C-circumflex | C-caron | C-acute | D with stroke | E-ogonek | Ë | G-circumflex | G-breve | H-circumflex | I-ogonek | Ï | Dotless I | J-circumflex | L with stroke | Ñ | Õ | Ö | O-double acute | Ø | O-ogonek | S-cedilla | S-comma | S-caron | S-circumflex | T-comma | U-breve | Ü | U-ogonek | U-krouzek | U-double acute | Z-caron |- ! style="background: #e0e0e0;text-align:right;" | :Category:Uncommon Latin letters: | style="font-family:; font-family /**/:inherit;" | Æ | Ð | DZ (letter) | DŽ | Schwa | Yogh | Hwair | Kra (letter) | LJ (letter) | Ll | NJ (letter) | Eng | OE ligature | Ou (letter) | Half r | Long s | ß | Þ | Wynn | IJ (letter) |}
Latin alphabet
All 26 standard letters of the Latin alphabet, plus all extended Latin grapheme considered as distinct letters in languages that use the Latin alphabet. Alphabetic writing systems
Latin alphabet
This category needs un-børking. If anyone has Wikipedia un-børking powers, could they please apply the automatic un-børkulator to this category. —User:Ashley Y 05:00, 2005 Jan 8 (UTC) What is the difference between :Category:Latin alphabet and :Category:Latin letters ? --User:Sl 07:33, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Latin alphabet
A note on the fonts used in this template: the extended range and uncommon letters section call the template Template:Unicode_fonts for font family, to ensure proper displayal of the characters on user agents which cannot handle Unicode properly (i.e. Internet Explorer). The font family is followed by a trick which allows better browsers like Opera (browser) and Mozilla Firefox to do their own font matching. See Template_talk:Unicode for more info. 08:56, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC) == IPA letters == I have removed the recently added IPA letters from the template. The IPA alphabet is not an extended Latin alphabet, but a different alphabet which happens to be made up out of letters originating from the Latin. This template should only list letters which are actually used in the standard ortography of languages, for those languages which use an extended Latin alphabet, and letters which historically formed a part of (a version of) the alphabet. Thus yogh is in (used in Middle English and Middle Scots), but Ezh is out (used only for IPA). 00:22, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
L
LA | LB | LC | LD | LE | LF | LG | LH | LI | LJ | LK | LM | LN | LO | LP | LR | LS | LT | LU | LW | LX | LY | LZ |Words begining with Latin_alphabet:
Latin_Alphabet
Latin_alphabet
Latin_alphabet
Latin_alphabet
Latin_alphabet
Latin_alphabet
Latin_alphabet
Latin_alphabet_navbox
Latin_alphabet_navbox
These materials are based on Wikipedia and licensed under the GNU FDL
YouTube.com videos better site than Turbo Tax 2007
